This invention relates to synchronizing and organizing contact information received from multiple sources.
More people are relying on electronic devices such as smartphones or computers to store and organize contact information for various contact entities (e.g., friends, family members and business contacts). However, most electronic devices still rely heavily on users' manual operations to gather and populate contact information. As the number of contacts increases, the users spend more time on the tedious task of entering and updating contact information for other users. For example, anytime the users are notified of updates in the contact information, the users are responsible for manually assessing the reliability of the updated contact information and changing the contact information in the electronic devices.
Contact information of a user can be obtained via various sources. Traditional sources of contact information include business cards, v-cards, contact importing tools, emails and webpages. Other sources of contact information include social networking services provided over the Internet. The primary function of a social networking service is to enable users to conveniently communicate with other users. To enhance such a function, the social networking service often retains contact information of the users. The contact information in the social networking service may be generated and maintained directly by a user. For example, a user or may manage his or her profile on the social networking service to allow other users to get in touch with the user. Alternatively, a user's contact information in the social networking service may be entered by someone other than the user.
The increase in the number of sources for the contact information renders managing of the contact information more time consuming and complicated because the users need to assess the reliability of contact updates, manually update entries for the contact updates and resolve any conflicts in the contact information manually. To keep the contact information current all the time, the users may need to spend an inordinate amount of time and resources.